


The Director

by Enygmass



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Dark, arkham goes through like 9 doctors a month and thats during holidays, i mean anything with jonathan is a bit spooky lbr, ish, unnamed bc who needs to name the doctors??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-18 00:31:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16106984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enygmass/pseuds/Enygmass
Summary: Joan Leland had been a doctor at Arkham long enough to endure the career of one director. Jonathan Crane, however, was something entirely unexpected - and not in the good way.





	The Director

**Author's Note:**

> I don't see enough fics of Jonathan's time as a director at Arkham, so I'm here to deliver. You may not want it, but here she is!

Everyone avoided the director’s office.

There was something unsettling about the area that it was in. Maybe it was because the air always seemed stuffy and unbearable when you entered the hall. Maybe it was because the black polished door was always shut, and you could never see movement when you peered through the clouded glass, if you could see past the black sharp lettering of “Dr. Jonathan Crane” which took up half the area, that was. Maybe it wasn’t the area itself that was the problem but more of who resided in it, the man who wandered the halls with grim intent, who drew shadows towards him with each corner he turned and who could silence a room of inmates with a single, unquestioned look.

Joan Leland remembered what it had been like before he arrived. The original director had been a jovial man with permanently red cheeks lined with veins from laughter and green eyes that always had a look of mischief in them. The original director had always sat with the others during lunch and had always taken the time of day to ask a simple “how are you?” or “how is patient…?”. The original director had seemed to genuinely care for the people under his watch.

But age and overindulgence had taken their toll both on appearance and heart, and the original director had eventually been forced to step down from his chair position after a horrific stroke-scare that had caused near disaster during a group therapy session. Inmates dealt poorly with stress on their own. To see a man near death, although it elated a few at the horrific prospect of it, caused others a great amount of distraught.

That was when the new director had stepped in.

Joan was the first to notice he never addressed them as anything more than staff. Unlike the original director, when Dr. Crane had first addressed them, his speech that he had given lacked any of the warmth they were used to. His blue-eyed gaze had fallen on every member, as though analyzing them, although she later overheard one doctor compare it to a butcher looking at pigs. Joan had tried to pretend that she hadn’t seen those thin lips pinch into a tight line of disappointment when he had looked at them all. She also tried to pretend that she hadn’t noticed how his hands, with bony fingers and nails that were longer than she had envisioned, had curled into tight fists in front of him as he finished his derogatory speech with a simple statement of “I will be making some changes.” Joan tried to pretend that she didn’t notice a lot of things about Dr. Crane.

When he didn’t join them in the break room for the first week no one spoke. They shrugged it off as him having to do a lot to recover from the previous director’s abrupt leave. When he didn’t join them in the break room for the second week, some spoke. They questioned if he was ever going to come. When he didn’t join them in the break room for the third week, Joan went to his office to ask him herself.

She regretted it as soon as her hand touched the door. It swung open with a force that had taken her back, causing an expression of alarm to appear on her face. Dr. Crane’s too thin form, unflattered by the black suit that clung to it, towered over hers as he stared down at her behind the wire-framed glasses that were set on his narrow nose. Everything about the man was narrow, long, and abnormal. The way that his russet hair was set in disarray as though he had been running his hands through it in a stress-filled haze did nothing more to ease his looks. Joan felt a lump form in her throat and forced herself to swallow it down and with it the question she had meant to ask. They both held each other’s gaze and Joan felt like, for the briefest of moments, that she would never be able to know genuine warmth again. Cold, detached, analytical, and draining her of any fire she might have had that motivated her to come here. She pretended that this wasn’t how she felt but when he broke their stare to look just past her shoulder she couldn’t deny the gratefulness she felt when her stomach ceased its rolling motions.

“Was there something you needed, Doctor Leland?” The words were spoken with an over-accentuation of each letter as he looked towards her again. Joan almost wanted to request that he look away once more but found herself shaking her head in response instead. She had no excuse, no justification for resting her hand on the director’s door, on his door. If Dr. Crane took notice of this, he offered her no words in return. He lips fell into a tight line again, as they had when he had first seen them, and he stepped into the hall with her, closing the door behind him with a resounding click that reminded Joan of the Arkham cells. 

“If that’s the case, then you should be heading back to the break room. I have rounds to attend to.” The way his form moved past hers with a fluidity that was like water on stone caused her to, by reflex, tense up in response. If he took notice of this, he still offered her no words as he turned and began to walk down the hall.

Joan watched on as he made his exit. She tried to pretend that she didn’t see how the shadows in the hall really did seem to hang off his form. She tried to pretend that she was fine, now that he had left. She tried to pretend that she hadn’t noticed the way his lips had twisted into a tight smile as he had seen the way she tensed up. He was still new, after all. It would take time for both he and the staff to adjust to one another.


End file.
